Before Stoll, Reyna and Hughes, Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Summary: The specific implementation of an abstract idea, such as improving the functionality of the Internet, may be a patent-eligible concept.
Google dismissed the patent infringement claims filed by Sholem Weisner because they claimed ineligible subject matter. All four asserted patents shared one specification. Two patents claimed methods for recording a mobile device user’s location data for use in optimizing a search (the “travel log patents”), while the other two patents claimed methods for using the travel histories to improve search results (the “search optimization patents”). . Although the District Court only analyzed the travel log patents under the Alice two-part test, it rejected both the travel log patents and the search optimization patents as patent ineligible.
On appeal, the Federal Circuit affirmed the District Court’s findings on the travel log patents. However, the Federal Circuit reversed the District Court’s determination of patent ineligibility with respect to the search optimization patents. The Federal Circuit determined that the claims of the search optimization patents were directed to an abstract idea. However, the specific implementation of this abstract idea to solve a problem unique to the Internet transformed the claims into eligible subject matter claims. Specifically, implementing physical travel history data from a “lead person” to prioritize search results, where conventional search sorting methodologies defaulted to virtual visit data to sort results of search, solved the Internet-specific problem of searches providing impersonal search results. The Federal Circuit compared search optimization claims with DDR Holdings, LLC v. Hotels.com, LP, 773 F.3d 1245 (Fed. Cir. 2014), which similarly solved a specific Internet problem by overruling conventional Internet sequences with a proprietary methodology. .
Judge Hughes dissented, arguing that the claims recited common and conventional search engine optimization algorithms, leaving only the abstract idea of using location data to improve search results. Judge Hughes also argued that the problem of search engine optimization is not particular to the Internet, as people have in the past used a referral’s physical travel data for recommendations before, such as now ask friends which restaurants they have visited before.
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